Nineteenth Century New Jersey Photographers

Nineteenth Century New Jersey Photographers

Revision of illustrated article in New Jersey History, Fall/Winter 2004

by Gary D. Saretzky

By 1900, approximately 3,000 individuals had worked in New Jersey as professional or serious amateur photographers but only a handful have reputations that have survived into the 21st century.1 Most of us have seen an imprinted name on the back an old photograph and wondered who that person was who took the photograph. Where did the photographer come from? Did he or she have a family? Was photography just a short-term vocation or a long-term career? If an address is also imprinted, when did the photographer work at that location?

To some extent, this essayCwhich provides selected information about approximately 10 percent of the photographers known to have worked in the state in the 1800sCis a work in progress that aims toward a biographical directory of nineteenth century New Jersey photographers. Included is information about, and examples of, the work of these photographers, most of whom achieved notable success in their lifetimes. The directory will include data about all the photographers that have come to my attention with the help of numerous archivists, librarians, researchers, and collectors.2

This article begins with an overview of photography in New Jersey, on both the professional front, with a subsection on stereographic view makers, and on the amateur front, featuring the development of camera clubs. It will then examine professional photography in New Jersey=s seven largest cities, particularly the largest, Newark, which had numerous photographic establishments. (While some residents of Essex, Hudson, and other counties near New York patronized Manhattan portrait studios, they had ample and often lower priced alternatives closer to home.) Newark also was nineteenth century New Jersey's center for manufacturing photographic materials for local, New York, and even national markets. Consequently, the Newark section of the article includes a summary of photographic manufacturing and developments in photographic technology associated with the city. Following Newark, the next six largest cities are discussed in order of size in 1890: Jersey City, Paterson, Camden, Trenton, Hoboken, and Elizabeth. The article then continues with a survey of photography in the towns and villages in New Jersey=s twenty-one counties, treated alphabetically by county. Finally, it concludes with an alphabetical list of those photographers mentioned in this article.

Here, and in the future directory, excluded are those photographers who were born before 1900 but who did not become active in New Jersey until after the turn of the century. Also, individuals born in New Jersey who left the state before they became photographers are, with a few notable exceptions, excluded. New Jersey was the birthplace of a number of famous photographers, who regrettably for the state's photographic history, left in their youth.

For example, Augustus Washington, renowned African American daguerreotypist, was born in 1820 in Trenton, but probably did not practice in the state before attending Dartmouth College. Remaining in New England, he made portraits in New Hampshire and later in Connecticut before immigrating to Liberia in 1853. Among his subjects in 1846 or 1847 was the abolitionist John Brown.3 In 1864, legendary photographer, editor, and New York art gallery operator Alfred Stieglitz was born in Hoboken and he was proud of it.4 But his only positively identified photographs of a New Jersey subject were of a swimming pool in Deal. Some of his views of New York may have been taken from the Jersey side of the Hudson but even so, his adult associations with New Jersey were limited.5 Both Stieglitz and Dorothea Lange, another Hoboken native born in 1895 and well known for her Depression-era photographs, including migrant workers in New Jersey, were featured in the AMasters of American Photography@ set of twenty postage stamps issued in 2001 by the United States Postal Service.6

City directories and census records list many professional photographers who are not known to have operated their own business in the state. Some worked for other photographers in New Jersey; others commuted to New York or Philadelphia. While commuters are counted as New Jersey photographers in the directory, most are not discussed in this article, although a few are identified. Similarly, only one photographer who retired to New Jersey after a career elsewhere is included.

An Overview of Professional Photography in New Jersey

Photography was introduced to the public in 1839, principally by Louis Jacques Mand? Daguerre in France and William Henry Fox Talbot in England.7 By the fall of 1839, there were experimenters in the United States, including inventor and machinist Seth Boyden, Jr. (1788-1870) of Newark, New Jersey. Although it is unlikely that he Aproduced the first daguerreotype in this country,@ as stated on a tablet under his statue in Washington Park, located near the location of his machine shop, Boyden certainly was among the first Americans to try the process and perhaps the first in the state.8 For his own use, he built a one-of-a-kind daguerreotype camera, now at the Newark Museum, which incorporated a mirror to reverse the image. Since daguerreotypes normally are laterally reversed, some practitioners would shoot into a mirror set at fortyfive degrees when photographing scenes that included street signs; Boyden=s camera flipped the image automatically.

Unlike Boyden, who was interested in photography for scientific and technical reasons, most early practitioners were professional portrait photographers. The invention of photography opened a huge market for portraits because most people could not afford to hire a professional portrait painter. As with many technological innovations when first introduced, the daguerreotypes in the early 1840s were still relatively expensive, up to $4 or $5 for a sixth plate (the most common size, 2 3/4 by 3 1/4 inches), including presentation case. This was in an era when workers typically made from $1 to $3 per day depending on skill level. But by 1850, the price for daguerreotypes gradually had declined to fifty cents to a dollar, and small ones could be

had for as low as twenty-five cents.9 Increasingly affordable to the middle class, daguerreotype portraits were made in the millions in the period 1840 to 1855.

After 1850, most of the larger towns and cities had at least one or two photographers who established studios that flourished for at least a decade, while many other studios stayed open more briefly. Professional photographers became concentrated in the cities, especially Newark and other urban centers near New York, and portraiture continued to be their largest source of income. The market for commercial photography intended for magazine pages only began to develop significantly in the 1890s after the introduction of halftone reproductions.10

Many of the extant records concerning early photographers in New Jersey pertain to studios but the typical daguerreotypist in the early 1840s was an itinerant who stopped his specially equipped horse-drawn wagon at towns, villages, and farmhouses until the modest local demand was exhausted and then moved on, perhaps visiting again the following year. Such was certainly the case in Somerville, where a long series of daguerreotypists advertised in the local newspapers that they had taken a room over a local store or at the Courthouse for a few days or weeks and would be available for sittings. One early itinerant was James Ackerman, said to be from Philadelphia, who stayed in Somerville in June 1841.11 He advertised that he could make daguerreotypes with exposures from one to three minutes, indicating that he was not yet familiar with Aaccelerators@ (especially bromine fuming) that made the plate much more sensitive and, by shortening the exposure time, vastly increased the clarity of the results.

After the late 1840s, when studios were well established in the larger towns and cities (fig. 1), traveling daguerreotypists continued to operate in rural areas. For example, in about 1850, young H.C. Baird, a Hunterdon County native who grew up in Neshanic in Somerset County, became a traveling daguerreotypist, operating in Readington, Clover Hill, Stanton, Blawenberg, Zion, Mt. Rose, and other hamlets in and near Somerset County, before opening a studio in Rahway.12 In the 1860s and 1870s, a few photographers such as S.S. Teel (Hope), Frank Z. Fritz, (Lambertville), G.M. Primrose (Belvidere), and Edward C. Haines (Woodstown) still billed themselves as Atraveling artists.@13 Their cartes de visite (albumen prints mounted on cards approximately 2 1/4 by 4 inches) could be considered photographic folk art in their resemblance to painted portraits that usually presented figures with flat, even lighting and little three-dimensional perspective. Usually looking directly into the camera, subjects stood or sat in stereotypical poses with modest studio furnishings and accessories (fig. 2). But by 1860, the heyday of the itinerant had long since passed: in the last few decades of the nineteenth century, most rural New Jerseyans had their pictures taken in established studios when they Acame to town@ for business or pleasure.

Nineteenth century photographic galleries promoted their services through a number of methods, including listings in business directories, newspaper advertisements, and on-site promotions. In the daguerreian era and later, the larger studios had galleries with sample pictures on display. For example, Robert M. Boggs of New Brunswick advertised in 1856, AIt will afford satisfaction if the reader will call and

examine the large collection of specimens, whether in want of pictures or not. Gallery free to all.@14 One visitor, Alexander Donaldson, wrote in 1858, AWe saw as fine pictures . . . as we have ever seen in the most noted New York establishments.@15

Daguerreotypists also often used poems in their newspaper ads to attract attention. The following is fairly typical:

Farewell! and as thou leavest me now, Away my tears I=ll wipe, But as to Fate=s storm I will bow, Thoul=t leave thy Daguerreotype,

Sung the disconsolate maiden to her lover, so they journied to J. McPherson Bowlby=s Gallery, over Stevens & Vroom=s Hardware Store, Somerville, and had his picture taken. It was so life-like the maiden wept over it again and again.16

Other daguerreotypists sought to attract customers with less emotional but more dignified ads signifying their competence, as did George W. Prosch in the Princeton Whig, April 21, 1848:

Mr. Prosch respectfully gives notice to the Ladies and Gentlemen of Princeton and vicinity of his return and having increased facility by reason of various and superior instruments, suited to the different kinds of Likenesses, and having had much experience in the Daguerreotype art since last here, he with increased confidence offers his services to this respectable community, most heartily wishing to Daguerreotype every one of them. Mr. P. has taken room in the house next the Bank, recently occupied by Mrs. Skelly, where he will be happy to see his friends who on a former occasion gave him so flattering a reception. Mr. P. is prepared to take the Likenesses of small children having an instrument specially adapted. Also Daguerreotype and other Portraits copied.17

In the mid-1850s, the daguerreotype was largely superceded by the collodion "wet plate" processes. To make a collodion image, the glass negative (or other support) had to be sensitized in a darkroom (or dark tent) immediately before use and exposed and developed before it dried. Collodion had several applications: paper albumen prints18 from glass negatives; ambrotypes19 on glass; and images on blackened sheets of iron (ferrotypes, a.k.a. tintypes).20 Less commonly, other supports like ceramics and cloth were also used. With the advent of cheaper collodion products, New Jersey photographers updated their technology or went out of the profession. Fewer and fewer daguerreotypes were made after 1855, although the typical folding cases made for daguerreotypes continued to be used to present ambrotypes, tintypes, and occasionally albumen prints into the 1860s.

The portrait market boomed with the onset of the Civil War, prompting a huge demand for cheap portraits of soldiers and their families. Numerous studios offered

inexpensive cartes de visite and tintypes of various sizes. To help pay for the costs of

the war, the federal government began taxing photographs (two cents each for

photographs under twenty-five cents) and requiring photographers to take out annual licenses.21

For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1865, the federal Commissioner of Internal Revenue reported on the total payments by New Jersey photographers in three categories for licenses: $10 for annual receipts under $500; $15 if not over $1,000; and $25 for over $1,000. Based on the revenue in each category, it is possible to estimate the number of photographers in each in New Jersey and its neighboring states (table 1). As the data indicates, fewer photographers operated per person in New Jersey in 18641865 than in New York and Pennsylvania. One possible interpretation of this fact is that there were more transient individuals in the big cities of New York and Philadelphia-- that is, more commuters and visitors not counted in the census. If the total daily population of the cities were included, the photographers per capita would be closer among the three states.

Table 1

New Jersey Photographers: Approximate Number of Licenses, Fiscal Year 1864-186522

State

$10 licenses

New Jersey 35

New York

339

Pennsylvania 322

$15 Licenses

30 203 95

$25 Licenses

31 221 125

Total Licensed Photographers

96 763 542

Licensed Photographers per resident in 1860

1 per 7,000 1 per 5,086 1 per 5,362

By 1870, the larger cabinet card format (4.25 by 6.5 inches) was also popular for portraits. Photographers found that they could use imprints on the back of card mounts as a convenient advertising medium. Morris (or Morriss) Yogg, active in Newark in the 1890s, stated on the verso of his cabinet cards, AIf you have beauty, come, we=ll take it; if you have none, come, we=ll make it.@ Where Yogg was challenged by lack of beauty, he used accessories in an effort to enhance the sitter's appearance. (fig. 3)

In 1870, 7,558 professional photographers were recorded in the U.S. Census. But New Jersey, as a largely agricultural state, had relatively few (149), as compared to New York (1,298). About half of these 149 had their own studios, with a wide range in the size of the business. Although financial data is not available for 1870, for 1867, there are monthly 5% federal income tax returns at the National Archives. Sixty-four studios reported $68,151 gross income that year, with more than half earned by only ten:

Table 2

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